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Saturday, 28 April 2012

CHAPTER SIX: ROUTING

Routing is so important (I Still can not believe I forgot to put it in) Anyway, Routing is what tells your Sims where they can and cannot go. It also determines where the in-game camera can reach, that is why you can not see the edge of the world in game and why you cannot touch the light house in sunset valley. Without routing your Sims can walk up a cliff and even walk on air to get where they need to the fastest.

1. So you are ready to test your world in-game. Below I have Port Jones ready for testing with the Fog turned Off.

2. Routing is found under Terrain Editing Tools. There are 3 route types. (a) Erase - which is to erase errors (b) Sims Non-routable - To paint areas your Sims CANNOT touch. (c) Camera Non-routable - To paint areas the camera CANNOT go. (d) Include Steepness - Which allows you to see areas that are too steep. The Routing tool has only Brush size to adjust which makes it very easy to use.

3. Here is a cut-out ready to be routed. But first...go to next step...

4. Under the VIEW tab, click SHOW ROUTING DATA

5. Your map should look like this. The White lines show all the places your sims can go. As you can see that is everywhere except the water. Under View tab click Show Routing Data again to turn it off.

6. Now a common area to start is a Hill or Mountain like below

7. Select the Sims Non-Routable brush, adjust the size to fit the area you want to paint, and just click to paint. Perfection is not needed here. Just paint the areas you do NOT want your sims to be able to walk on. It shows as a blue paint.

8. You can also check the Include Steepness box so that you can see areas that are really steep. It shows as a red paint.

9. You do not have to paint every steep area. Only paint the areas that would be silly for your sims to be walking on. And also areas you just do not want players to be able to reach. Like the decorative outskirts on your world.

or to create a path up a hill. Otherwise your sims will just run straight up the cliff.

10. So here I am done painting all the areas I do NOT want my sims to be able to go.

11. Back to the VIEW tab, click REBUILD ROUTING DATA. Wait a few seconds for it to reset. There is no real indication that anything is happening except that your mouse might show the timer icon which tells you to wait.

12. When that is done, click Show Routing Data again and now you can see that the areas you painted no longer have the white lines. Therefore your sims can NOT go there.

13. This is optional. But if you drag the Routing Opacity slider all the way to the end, it makes the blue routing paint invisible. See next step

14. And you can clearly see that the areas you painted no longer have white lines.

7. Next switch to Camera Non-Routable brush. It shows as a yellow paint. Include Steepness is on in the Picture below which is why it is red. Anyway, try to start from the edge of the world and work you way inwards.

8. Try not to leave any spaces.

9. Depending on the size and shape of your world, paint until you get to where you want the camera to stop. Port jones in the example below is a rather big world and I had little room for camera movement. So the camera limit was just at the edge of the world.

10. I used photoshop for the Picture below. But the idea to to use the Camera brush all around the edges of the map, stopping where you need it. When you test your world in game, If you do not like the camera limits you have set, you can simply, erase and adjust the areas you want in CAW.

NOTE:

SHOW ROUTING DATA and REBUILD ROUTING DATA are also useful for checking that your roads are all connected. Correctly connected roads have a blue line running down the middle. Wrongly connected roads have a red line showing the break in connections.
Always use Rebuild Routing Data after making changes to roads and routing to make sure all changes are reset.

I find that it is okay for the camera paint to touch the edges of the world in such a case. Otherwise the camera can drift off forever in-game. In fact so much that one can lose sight of the world. So just make sure you paint all around, even if it is at the very edge.

This is a good basic tutorial krrank. I think you should possibly go into more detail about routing though, for example you don't want any disconnected white dots or lines. That's very important. If Sims get stuck they cause a lot of lag. Great work, though, in making CAW accessible to newbies.

Hi Kiwi_tea, been absent for a bit, sorry.thank you for visiting and I must confess that the peculiarities of Routing isn't something I have studied yet. But as always I try to update whenever I learn something new in manner that would be easy to explain to my readers. Thank you once again and your comments are always appreciated. Cheers!

I messed something up. I accidentally selected a whole big section as unroutable. Clicking undo didn't help b/c I had already saved, it just undid some building moves that I'd made. Is there a way to undo unroutable territory? Thanx!

Hey, thanks for this useful tutorial!I'm building a world which is like an archipelago of tropical islands without bridges between them, like Isla Paradiso if you have Island Paradise expansion pack. And I just wanted to know if I need to put sims non-routable paint in the water or not?

hiFirstly, NO you do not need to use the sims non-routable paint in the water. That is automatic, so to speak. Secondly, you should use the Camera non-routable paint, around the world to make sure the in-game camera does not drift off indefinitely.

When I create lakes I get these crazy red and blue lines (like the white routing lines) that are attached to pink dots. No matter how shallow, how deep, how much I smooth or don't smooth the area...am I doing something wrong? Can these be fixed somehow? Is it not that big a deal? I've done so much research about routing, but it seems like no one else is having the problem I'm having for some reason? Here's a SS of what I'm talking about: http://oi60.tinypic.com/2jsfmt.jpg

Hi hi, Please don't worry. Those lines are perfectly normal. You also get them at the edge of oceans and around objects. They are areas that are UN-routable for Sims by default. So feel free to make you lakes as deep as you want too. It shouldn't affect your sims ability to swim either.

I can't get the rebuild routing data to work. I do the steepness and blue routing and then rebuild it, then turn the show routing data back on, all the white lines are still there. help! what did I do wrong?

HI Olivia. I'm sooooooo sorry for replying late...I got married, changed cities, etc.So, the most I can figure is to to give the Rebuild Routing data function a little time to work, since there is no obvious indication that it is working. Patch test a small area too. I hope this helps.

I have a problem. I marked the area where I didn't want the camera to come, but in game these area's have turned to water. An island world is cool too, but not what I originally had in mind. Do you know what to do?

Hi Krrank,Your website has been very helpful in explaining Create A World! Just one question- if I'm making an island, do I also have to paint sims non-routable around the edge of my map to prevent sims from swimming/boating off into the sunset? I'm not sure why if they would do that, but you never know with sims. Thank you in advance!-Sarathewise

Hi Sarahthewise, I am completely off the grid this year and I sincerely apologise. You have probably long since answered this question by now, but for the sake of any others that may have the same query. NO, you don't have to paint the sims non-routable around the island, that's automatic, but it doesn't hurt to use it where you are unsure.